Monday, 27 September 2010

Dealing with telcos

Is it me or is it a challenge dealing with any telco.

Our favourite telco is well known and I may have to start talking of our favourite mobile telco as well.

It may be paranoia on my part but you always assume the worst in every word they say. Pick up every subtly of what they actually typed in an email and question it. Assume it won't work even with assurances to the contrary...

However, very encouraging calls this evening looks like we are on track for early October for our mobile data and for working IPv4 routed blocks. Fingers crossed.

Sounds like IPv6 is still a bit of an unknown. We'll be able to tunnel over IPv4, but native may be fun to test. We'll know when it is live.

3 comments:

"Assume it won't work even with assurances to the contrary..."That is how I live my life. Sad really but most big companies, government and government contractors are astonishingly useless.

Currently dealing with VTFourS [Schools contractor] about broadband. I may as well have just not bothered, no one has any answers, knows anything or wants to do anything. It is almost like they are all employed for the purpose of avoiding doing anything or giving excuses as to why something (normally common sense) in fact cannot be done.

With FaveTelco I assume things are in two states... not working or just about to be not working... This assumption is heightened whenever I see one of their vans sat near a cabinet near one of the sites I look after or near the exchange.

Still I bet we collectively have some tales of Telco Incompetence...

I had a site where the leased line used to go down about 10-12 minutes after it rained heavy. I traced the path the line took back to the exchange and it was immediately apparent why it got cut off soon after rain: The exchange was at the bottom of a hill, the rain ran down (past all the drains - special local authority scheme to avoid having to deal with too much water) and straight in to the front door of the exchange. I'm not sure why it should take a customer to find this out for himself, but it had been going on for YEARS when I got annoyed by it...

A very small concrete berm was placed at the exchange yard gate to push the water away from the exchange door and the problem never came back.

Progress indeed, the first time I tested a data sim in a PCMCIA card quite a few years ago I was horrified to get a lease of 1.2.xxx.xxx. I was almost too scared to continue in case I conflicted some ancient Pentagon mainframe. Put me off for a long time. Routed IPv4 blocks in competent hands would be terrific progress (ironic isn't it?), which just goes to show the present operators up for what they really are.Nice work indeed.